1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a front panel apparatus used for an electric apparatus of, for example, a disk drive of DVD+RW or the like.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a related art, there is an example of a disk drive of DVD+RW shown in FIG. 6. The example includes a volume knob 3 partially exposed outward from an operating port 2 opened at a front panel 1a of a casing 1, and a light emitting diode LED opposed to a display port 4 of the front panel 1a via a lens 5. Further, numeral 6 designates a jack for a headphone and numeral 7 designates a push button for extracting and retracting a tray 8.
Explaining an operating procedure, when a power source is connected to the disk drive to start, the light emitting diode LED is made to emit light based on a starting signal thereof, and the display port 4 is lighted via the lens 5. In the starting state, the tray 8 is unloaded (refer to an imaginary line of FIG. 6), a disk (not illustrated) is mounted onto the tray 8, thereafter, the push button 7 is depressed to load the tray 8 (refer to a bold line of FIG. 6), the disk on the tray 8 is rotated by a turn table, information recorded on the disk is read to reproduce by an optical pickup, an amount of reproduced sound thereof is adjusted to constitute a large sound amount by rotating the volume knob 3 in a left direction a or a small sound volume by rotating the volume knob 3 in a right direction b, and the controlled reproduced sound is heard by the headphone connected to the jack 6.
Although according to the above-described constitution of the related art, the starting state is displayed by lighting the display port 4 by making the light emitting diode LED emit light via the lens 5, according thereto, a number of parts is increased by an amount of using the lens 5, integrating operation is troublesome by taking time and labor in welding the lens 5 to the front panel 1a and manufacturing cost is expensive.